Walk Like an “Egypt Hen”

Now, I was seriously ticked off when “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures”, “Stardust Crusaders” ended its season without completing its mission, but then, we would not have our final season, which, for some reason is called “Egypt Hen”. Although we are in Egypt, where does the hen come in? And if it is a play on words, it’s terrible.

So, the first segment of 24 episodes got us from Tokyo to about 400km from Cairo. That took about 50 days or so. Remember (and if you like, you can read the review for the first part of this series to understand better; otherwise, it’s the Cliff Notes® version). Mom Holly got possessed by a Stand that is slowly killing her. The crew, left to right (Grandpa Joesph Joestar, Jean Pierre Polnareff, Jojo, Noriaki Kakyoin and Mohammed Avdol), make their way to Evil Lord and Master Dio’s HQ, beset along the way by Stand users. Once they get to Egypt, they are joined by Iggy (that freakish dog). That freakish dog is a Stand user as well and, with him in tow, they are going to traverse the final miles in their fight with Dio. He’s like Donald Trump, but without the crappy hair.

It’s that the users we now meet are upper tier folks, called the Nine Egyptian Gods, with more vicious powers and abilities and are bound and determined to end it all here right now and kill them off. How our band of rugged heroes manage to avoid their clutches and machinations can be attributed more to sheer luck than any real understanding of both their own abilities and that of their Stand opponent. Remember, the operative word for this show is ‘bizarre’ and we play that in spades (or swords, since everything is based off a Tarot card deck).

Their new enemies are far more heartless and brutal, as Dio has promised them anything they want if they can defeat the Joestar Brigade. One set of villains that bothered me was a brother team called Zenyatta and Mondatta (Quick, someone call The Police!). No, it gets better, for in the original Japanese version, they were named Oingo and Boingo (Quick, someone call the Danny Elfman!) Another is a woman, Mariah (Quick, someone call the Mariah Carey!) who uses magnetism to try and defeat them, but she has a very funny sequence in using her powers and is the absolute closest you’ll get to fan service, when her breasts get big, but for a ‘bizarre’ reason.

To be honest, it really didn’t get fully interesting until Iggy had his own encounter with another animal stand user called Pet Shop (Ouick, someone call the Neil Tennant!) and then everyone gets into the Dio household for the grand dramatic climax. It was interesting that the director of the show was willing to kill off its own. This has always been a sticking point with me: the good guys sail through, relatively unscathed, while the enemy is stacked up like cordwood. Not for this one. You see real pain and suffering and anguish from everyone. Now, the actual, final boss battle was drawn out a bit too long and Dio is another clone of the megalomaniacal power-hungry, all-powerful types that revel in their own conceit, as nothing can stop them, so they brag and they boast and they bloviate. (Look that one up; you may want to add it to your vocabulary).

I wanted to see this series to the end, as I did feel cheated in the first half of this, but I feel that I’m not going to follow this any further, either going ahead or heading backwards. It’s bizarre just to be bizarre and with no real thought as to what it wants or hopes to accomplish. Also, the fact that EVERYONE is buff (even Grandma; she looks like she could bench-press an 18-wheeler) is annoying to no end. It’s just that I can’t piece together if this is supposed to be a real parody of the genre (the people here are exceptionally bullet-proof; some of the villains are a real waste of effort, not much better than Dr. Ver from “Symphonia”) or something devastatingly dramatic (some portions of the final Boss Fight).

If you just want to sit around and go “What the hell is going on? I mean WHAT THE HELL is going on!”, then this is the show for you.

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork 7 (Still really bizrre) Plot 7 (Starting to get tired) Pacing 7 (Moves along consistently) Effectiveness 7 (Things don’t make any real sense)Conclusion 7 (It reaches a ‘coupler’, but hasn’t ended)Fan Service 2 (A similar show would be “Okamisan”)